While the Human Rights Channel has been curating citizen video of the protest movement, our team has learned about innovative ways Venezuelan citizens—from protesters to technologists, journalists, and politicians—are using photos and videos to document human rights abuses and draw international attention to the issue.

Addressing Verification through Technology and Media Education

A video originally from Colombia was one of the pieces of footage that circulated on Venezuelan social media falsely purporting to document the Venezuelan protest movement.

As reported previously on the WITNESS blog, at the beginning of the protest movement, the circulation of false images on social media threatened to undermine the thousands of authentic photos and videos that citizens were recording every day. It didn’t take long for activists to recognize the need to produce footage that could be trusted by third parties.

Within two weeks, Mood Agency, a Venezuelan publicity firm released FotoAhora, a free mobile app for Android and iOS. In two clicks, a user can take a photo and share it on Twitter, where the image appears with a line of metadata taken from the phone, including the date, time, and location of the photo. The tweet also contains a shortcode that a viewer can enter into this website to verify that the photo was indeed taken then and there with FotoAhora.

The idea of using metadata to create verifiable citizen footage is also behind InformaCam, a beta app in development by WITNESS and the Guardian Project. While FotoAhora’s functionality differs from InformaCam’s, the intent is similar, and Mood Agency’s Vanessa Mennechey told us that the app was created quickly for the immediate needs of Venezuela’s media activists. After polishing the photo version, she said, they may move on to develop a version capable of working with videos as well.

Following the closed-door meeting, Corina shared with her Twitter followers a video she was unable to present to OAS members. The 4-minute video, with the YouTube title, “Video Maria Corina Brought to the OAS,” compiles raw citizen footage—some of which has been verified and curated on the Human Rights Channel—and first-hand testimony of violent attacks by security forces in the streets and in detention. Thus far, the tweet has been shared nearly 10,000 times, and the video viewed by nearly one million. Venezuela’s government has since stripped Machado of her seat in the National Assembly, and troops blocked her from entering the legislature.